Heroes of the past

Rory Schuler, Staff Writer

Sunday

May 20, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 20, 2007 at 8:01 PM

Silas Wheldon, a soldier with the 3rd Massachusetts Volunteer regiment, fought rebel soldiers for the Union Army. At 60, he fathered a son. That boy, named Charles E. French, grew up and followed his father’s boot prints, enlisting as a soldier and fighting with the National Guard’s 9th Company in the bloody World War I trenches of Le Havre, France.

Silas Wheldon, a soldier with the 3rd Massachusetts Volunteer regiment, fought rebel soldiers for the Union Army.At 60, he fathered a son.That boy, named Charles E. French, grew up and followed his father’s boot prints, enlisting as a soldier and fighting with the National Guard’s 9th Company in the bloody World War I trenches of Le Havre, France.After dodging bullets, barbed wire and poison gas, French came home. Years later, he and his wife celebrated the birth of a son of their own.Like his father and grandfather, that boy grew up to be a soldier, defending his nation as a U.S. Marine in the second World War.Unlike many of his fellow fighting men, he came home in one piece, and has survived and matured into a ripe 79-year-old man.Donald French, of Dighton, clad in Navy Blue rain gear and a Marine Corps cap, walked down headstone-lined row after row in the Mayflower Hill Cemetery, planting hundreds of American flags next to the graves of lost veterans.Saturday’s steady drizzle didn’t faze French. A hurricane wouldn’t have kept him home.He stooped down on one knee and pressed the wooden end of a star-spangled banner into the soil next to the final resting place of Alton L. Day. Barely legible, the fading marble marker tells little about the man buried beneath.As an American soldier, he fought in the Spanish American War, traveling to Puerto Rico and Cuba with the 6th Massachusetts Infantry.“There’s more than 6,000 vets buried in this city,” French said, touching the stone, leaning in close for an easier read. “We’ve got about 2,000 buried in this cemetery alone.”French knows he’s a member of a fading generation. Many of his fellow World War II veterans have been buried throughout the massive, sprawling graveyard. He placed flags at many of their graves.“Most of us vets are getting older,” he said, standing up and walking toward a splintered fallen tree limb. “Let’s take a walk and see the Civil War graves.”French feels a solid connection to the war between the American north and south. As commander of Taunton’s Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, he devotes most of his free time to the group’s many endeavors.On Saturday, he and his fellow Silver City Civil War descendants were among those honoring dead freedom fighters by placing more than 2,000 flags and flowered wreaths across Mayflower Hill.French approached the statue and heavy black cannons that mark the area of the cemetery where the heaviest concentration of Civil War veterans have been interred.He gently pushed the pointed post of a small flag through the tufts of grass surrounding a tiny gray tombstone.“J. A. Freese, U.S. Navy,” French read aloud. “Navy — that’s kind of rare from that time. There weren’t a lot of Navy boys back then.”French walked back toward the rest of the group. He was one of nearly 40 volunteers who showed up to pay their respects.Along his way, French took a slight detour, stopping at a small, slanted bronze marker — the grave of one of the city’s most famous veterans.“Lowell Mason Maxham,” French said, adjusting a pair of flags and the flower wreath someone had placed there earlier. “This man won the Medal of Honor.”The rest of the city’s veterans’ graves, in Taunton’s other cemeteries, will be adorned with red, white and blue, over the next few days, to commemorate Memorial Day, only a week away. Wendell B. Presbrey Jr., secretary and treasurer of the Sons of Union Veterans, held a laminated map of plots at arm’s length as rain droplets gathered on the brim of his hat and the shoulders of his camouflage jacket.“Because of the sacrifices that these guys made, that’s why we’re here,” he said. “Over here is the grave of Henry N. Hopkins.”Presbrey, himself a former U.S. Army Corporal in Vietnam, walked toward a hulking, weathered monument — the Hopkins’ family headstone.“He was Taunton’s last survivor of the Civil War,” Presbrey explained as his niece, Crystal Munnis, placed a wreath at the marker’s base. “He was only a child, a musician. Henry Hopkins was a drummer boy during the Civil War and then he fought in World War I.”Hopkins died in 1942. Presbrey remembers seeing the man’s picture in the paper many years ago. He wished he still had a copy.

rschuler@tauntongazette.com

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.